Mister Gore Goes to Washington

Reuters: Glad-handing like the lifelong politician he was until losing the 2000 presidential race to George W. Bush, Gore called his return to Congress "an emotional occasion."

As a former Washington insider, Gore knows how to play the game:

Former British journalist Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley says he was not surprised Gore intentionally violated a rule requiring him to submit his written testimony 48 hours before the congressional hearings.

And Gore fillibustered during Sen. Inhofe's allotted 15 minutes, trying to avoid more pointed questions like, "Are you ready to change the way you live," as Gore himself asked viewers at the end of his propaganda movie.

Or, just wait until the committee chairmen are Democrats so they will do your bidding for you: "Boxer is the kindest bad-ass on Capital Hill, always finding new ways to remind us of how fantastic she is. Like this Wednesday, when she smacked down Senator James Inhofe for trying to cut off Al Gore during his testimony on global warming. Best part -- when she waves her gavel in Inhofe's face to remind him who's in charge."

And we don't expect MSM outlets like CNN to call attention to the veeps antics:

Brianna Keiler: "Wow. All right. That was quite an exchange. And, you know, we were expecting something from Senator James Inhofe. He is a critic of global warming....We thought maybe it might be with him and former Senator, former Vice President Al Gore, but it ended up between him and Senator Barbara Boxer. She really got a stinger in there, I will say."

Don Lemon: [Laughs, then quietly] "Good for her."

But just what is Gore up to here? What is behind his zealous crusade? Carbon dioxide? Bovine belching? Listing of icebergs as an endangered species? At Real Clear Politics Robert Tracinski tells us:

This, then, is the essence of Gore's complaint: there are too many humans and they are too well off.

Gore can fix that. He ends his speech by calling, among other things, for an immediate freeze on carbon dioxide emissions--which is to say, an immediate freeze on the generation of additional power--to be enforced by massive new "carbon taxes." On this proposal, he piggybacks the whole leftist welfare-state agenda, demanding that most of the money from these carbon taxes be "earmarked" for "those in lower income groups."

He concludes by saying that his plan will "discourage pollution while encouraging work." That's a very pleasant way to describe a global economic collapse into the unrewarded drudgery of a pre-industrial lifestyle.

Tracinski concludes, however, on a positive note:

But Al Gore is not getting it all his own way. In New York's Newsday, Ellis Hennican describes a three-on-three debate held last week in New York City, in which opponents of the global warming hysteria (...) took on some of the scare's defenders. The interesting thing about this debate is that the organizers polled the audience before and after the event. The result? The number of people who thought that global warming is a "crisis" dropped from 57% to 42%.

That's why folks like Al Gore have to keep claiming that there is an iron-clad "consensus" on global warming and that the debate is "over"--because the moment the debate on the scientific merits of global warming is actually allowed to begin, the alarmists start to lose.

Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe Posted by JohnGalt at March 24, 2007 12:26 PM